GRANTS LIST

1993

The Friendship Ambassadors Foundation is a US-based operating foundation with
extensive activities in Hungary, as well as other countries. The Foundation has promoted exchanges
in the performing arts, has organized festivals and performances, and has in the last 25 years
sponsored over 40,000 individuals on exchanges in 25 countries. In Hungary, it has organized the
American Hungarian Music Days in Veszprém (1993), a similar event in 1994, a Sacred Music
Symposium and Festival in Budapest (1994), and is planning for 1995 the third American-
Hungarian Music Days in Veszprém, a Children's Choir Festival in Komló, and an exchange
program with the Hungarian Dance Academy in Budapest.
The Corvina Foundation's grant was for sending an arts management expert to the 1993
Veszprém Music Days to hold a workshop on arts management and prepare an assessment of the
performing arts.

1994

The Invisible College (Láthatatlan Kollégium) is in its third year of operations. Its purpose
is to revive the tradition of elite education (in the humanities and social sciences) that had been
suppressed under Communism. It provides an opportunity for the very best university students to
pursue studies in unusual depth and to the full extent of their abilities. Students are admitted after
rigorous entrance examinations. The Invisible College offers a limited number of courses and
provides extensive special tutoring to students (as in the Oxford-Cambridge tradition). It admits
annually about 20-25 students. It has a distinguished Board of Trustees and outstanding professors
from various universities participate in its programs.

The Corvina Foundation's grant was to enable one of the very best of this elite group of
students to spend a year at an American University.

1995

The Corvina Foundation's grant was for continuing the work of Friendship Ambassadors
Foundation in promoting art exchanges, particlarly with respect to the dance program scheduled for
the current year.

Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola

The Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola(Hungarian College of Fine Arts) provides a regular
curriculum in the representational arts, i.e., in painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and so on.

The Corvina Foundation's grant is for establishing three $1,000 prizes, one to be awarded
annually for the next three years, for the most creative students graduating from the College. The
prizes will be awarded on the basis of the College's faculty's evaluation of the creative potential and
performance of the students.

The Budapest University of Economic Sciences is the premier academic institution in
economics, management, and other social sciences in Hungary, and possibly in all of Central and
Eastern Europe. It has maintained a significant academic potential even during the Communist
regime and its faculty produced research output that was considered good and solid by Western
standards even in the pre-1989 period. Its graduates are frequently admitted to graduate programs in
economics in the US; two of its graduates were currently enrolled as of 1995 in the PhD program in economics
at Princeton and one was enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Corvina Foundation's grant is towards the costs of a new business reference library at
the University.

1996

The grant is for conducting a one-week long course in Pécs, from June 24 to 28 on
marketing the non-profit arts. The course will deal with mission, nonprofit structure and trusteeship,
strategies for global involvement and development. It will also deal specifically with market
research, fundraising, grant application writing, planning of special events, audience development,
etc. The program is partially supported by the Hungarian Government and a contribution in kind is
being made by Delta Airlines.

Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola

The Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola(Hungarian College of Fine Arts) provides a regular
curriculum in the representational arts, i.e., in painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and so on.
The Corvina Foundation's grant is a renewal of the 1995 grant of three $1,000 prizes, one to
be awarded annually for the next three years, for the most creative students graduating from the
College. The prizes will be awarded on the basis of the College's faculty's evaluation of the creative
potential and performance of the students.

1997

The grant is a contribution towards the Hungary-America Project, also supported by Delta
Airlines and Affiliated Travel International. The immediate objective is to assist the B‚la Bartok
choir to develop more effective fund-raising techniques, find ways to acquire free or donated
services, prepare a program that would generate support in the US, and provide publicity for the
Choir.

This organization is a small literary publisher; it publishes the wonderful literary magazine
Liget, and occasionally books. The grant was a contribution towards its expenses.The website of Liget is accessible
here.

1998

The Dibner Institute is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and concerns itself with
the history of science. The purpose of the grant was to enable a distinguished historian of science to
undertake a fact-finding trip to the science and engineering library at the University of Miskolc and
evaluate its holdings. This library, originally derived from the College of Engineering at
Selmecbánya, in what is now Slovakia, is an outstanding collection of books on engineering and
science from the 17th through 19th centuries and has considerable historical importance.

The Budapest Review of Books (Budapesti Könyvszemle), modeled somewhat after the New York Review of Books,
is an outstanding, high-quality publication that reviews books and publishes interpretative and
analytical articles. The grant was a contribution towards its annual expenses.

Friends of Hungarian Higher Education Foundation

FHHEF (Magyar Felsõoktatás Baráti Alapitvány) was founded in 1998 with the help of the US Treasury Department's Office of
Technical Assistance, for the purpose of increasing the ability of higher educational institutions to
raise money from non-governmental sources. There is very little private giving in Hungary and
there has been no tradition in universities of alumni giving, development offices, and the like.
FHHEF developed a sensible program of assisting universities to create alumni offices and
development offices and it is to be hoped that, as a result of its activities, within a few years
Hungarian universities will be able to command larger financial resources from the private sector.

This institution, renamed recently from Magyar Képzőművészeti Főiskola(College of Fine
Arts), has used the previous grant for giving $1,000 prizes each year to its most creative graduating
student to such good advantage that it seemed important to renew the grant for another three years.
One of the previous prize-winners, Zoltán Ötvös, has been recognized after his graduation by being
awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in Marseille.

2001

This grant was used for the publication of a trilogy by two philosophers, Lajos András Kiss
and Gábor Kovács, and by a literary historian, Iván Gyõrffy. Kiss' work is entitled "On the Trail of
the Lost Conscience," which is a pun on Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu." The second
volume is on the history of thought and civilization and is entitled "The Chances of Obstinate Bona
Fide." The third volume has an environmental slant and is entitled "Endgame."

2002

Another grant was made to underwrite some of the operating expenses of the Review. It continues to be of the highest intellectual quality and
publishes the works of the best Hungarian writers and thinkers.
One recent issue highlighted philosophy and historical poetics and
contained a review essay on Husserl's Cartesian Meditations.
Another recent issue discussed the nature of totalitarian states and the problem of archeological excavation, documentation and conservation versus
reconstruction. The latter was important enough to become
the main subject of discussion at a presentation that took place at the Arts Exhibition Hall (Mücsarnok). The latest issue contains a review of the
minutes of the round-table negotiations immediately preceding the first free elections in 1990.

The volume of poetry by Emilia Búth became so popular that it had to be reprinted.The volume by Iván Gyõrffy, Endgame, was published and
contains an account of intellectual wanderings through Florida, South Africa, Armenia, Vietnam and other places. The two most
recent issues of the journal Liget contain some wonderful poetry, reflections on Hungarian history, global governance and a sustainable future for the environment.
The Foundation's most recent grant was for covering some of Liget's operating expenses.

2003

Another grant was made to this wonderful periodical so that it could continue its creative work. Recent issues contain short stories, poetry, a short play,
some interviews (one with a Hungarian professor of psychology and one with a member of the Corvina Board of Trustees), as well as an interesting article on Lewis Carroll.

Since our last grant to this institution it has been reclassified from a "College" to "University" status, which it well deserves. Two members of the Board of Trustees visited the institution
during the summer of 2003 and met with the Rector (President) of the university and had the opportunity of visiting the exhibit of the art works created by students. The new grant renews
the prize program and enlarges it by offering prizes to the two most creative graduating students each year. A significant change in the Corvina Foundation webpage is
that we now display selected works by the prize winners over the past several years. To see examples of the art, click here.

The Stencil Cultural Foundation is the parent organization of an important intellectual periodical, Beszélõ. It publishes numerous political commentaries;
recent articles have analyzed attitudes toward the European Union, human rights (an article by the important philosopher János Kis, corruption and similar subjects. But it also publishes articles on other subjects, such as sponsorship of art
in the Graeco-Roma period, Voltaire, and numerous other topics. The Foundation's grant is for covering operating expenses.

2004

The family library of the Rákóczi family had been housed at the Sárospatak Reformed College until the final months of World War II, when it was removed to Budapest, where it was seized by the Red Army and ultimately moved to the Nizhni Novgorod
State Regional Universal Library. Very little has been done to date in assessing the content and significance of this collection. A historian at Saint Louis University is planning to undertake a detailed study of this library, which is potentially one of the most
significant sources of information about literate culture in the Danube basin in the 17th century.

The Academy was founded in 1875, and since that time, has been extremely influential inproviding training in all aspects of musical preformance, composition and musicology.
It has had a stellar faculty and outstanding directors throughout its history. The present grant is for the purpose of enabling five
students to go abroad to compete in international competitions.

State financed ballet education and training started in 1937 at the Hungarian Royal Opera, and the predecessor current institution was founded in 1937. In
its current form it has existed since 1983. It teaches classical ballet, folk dansing, modern dance, choreography, dance theory and related subjects.
The grant is for the purpose of (1) allowing two students to come to the US to study and work with American choreographers, and (2) of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities.

Liget, a literary publisher supported by the Foundation several times in the past, has requested a grant to redesign its webpage, which will allow
archiving of its content and online searches by author, title and keyword.

2005

This is a new grant to Saint Louis University for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of some large-scale digitization, and to assess
the need for conservation treatment of rare and perishable materials at the Sárospatak Library, housed at the State Regional Library in Nizhni Novgorod.

The grant is for the purpose of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities, such as
from Romania and Ukraine. A previous grant of this type was extremely helpful in allowing such students to study at the Academy.
For an image of a student in performance, click here.

The grant is for the purpose of partially defraying the health insurance and living expenses of Hungarian students from neighboring countries in which they are minorities, such as
from Romania and Ukraine. Several previous grants of this type was extremely helpful in allowing such students to study at the Academy.
For an image of students in performance, click here.

The present grant is to enable an investigation of the possible existence of rare library materials that may be found in the libraries of Uzhgorod (Ukraine),
also called Ungvár in Hungarian. It is therefore similar in intent to the grant that enabled the
identification and photographing of important materials from the Sárospatak College Library that were housed for many years in the State
Regional Library of Nizhni Novgorod and have recently been returned to Hungary.

2007

The purpose of the grant is to make a contribution toward the costs of an international youth dance festival, to be held in the year 2008. This
festival will coincide with the creation of a master's program and the creation of a school for doctoral studies.

Liget was awarded a grant for two distinct purposes. The first is to underwrite the (re-)publication of a book by Gyula Hornyászky, originally published in 1910,
on Greek medicine in antiquity. The book has been worked over to put it into modern Hungarian idiom. The second purpose is to fund a lecture series on
how we use, misuse and abuse certain basic concepts in everyday communication and how this affects culture and society.

Liget was awarded a grant for two distinct purposes. The first is to underwrite the publication of several books. The second is the fund
for a period of several years a portion of the
publication Liget, which will be known as the "Corvina Column."